Cheap Gear Vs Expensive Gear - Can You Tell Which is Which?

how much different would a scene look using expensive pro gear versus cheap gear that's the question we're going to be answering today cut so here are the rules when shooting the pro version we could use anything we wanted regardless of price but for the DIY version or I guess the cheap version we weren't allowed to use anything that cost more than 100 except for the camera that is the one constant between the two scenes and that camera is the Canon r5c which Canon is also a sponsor on today's episode but before we dive into how we shot both I'm going to show you both sequences back to back to see if you can tell which is which then we'll show you how we shot it and at the end we'll reveal which was Pro and which was DIY [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] when we arrived at our location the first thing we did was come up with what the sequence would be my DP Daniel Ruth who I've worked with a bunch he shot several of my short films and has an amazing catalog of work including commercial short films and a feature but Daniel and I walked through and came up with what the sequence would actually be then we decided to split our shooting into three areas this first room for the open the middle area with the window and the spinal moment at the gate in each area we would do both the pro and our cheap versions before moving on to the next so with our sequence mapped out the first thing that we did was to get our camera up in the first room and that camera is the Canon r5c this one was sent to us by Canon who is also our partner on this episode and we have a few lenses here that we're going to be jumping in between all our Canon RF lenses and none of them are Cinema lenses just to keep a nice Middle Ground going for both versions and again the camera and lenses will stay the same between the two versions we're also shooting this 8K raw right in camera to a CF Express card you have two flavors of raw here St and LT we are going with the full St and this 8K raw is giving us 12 bit again all in camera inside this tiny body of course you have other codecs here like the MP4s both h.265 and h.264 and XF AVC all of these being four to two and 10 bit so there's a ton of amazing options including the ability to take raw out through HDMI to any external recorder we are of course shooting 24 frames per second or 2398 but you can take raw up to 60 and if you ship to other formats you can go up to 120 but we'll get to all of that a little later as always the first thing we did was to look at the natural light the room was giving us we have this door here that we're gonna have Justin open as our reveal into the world but then we are getting this nice flood of daylight that we can use to silhouette him at the door and then as he moves through the space it becomes a nice Edge light now as Justin moves forward Daniel is bringing him into our artificial light which was still a pretty simple setup overall our main light was this four foot tube light that Daniel rigged to the ceiling and used some black tape to create these eyebrows to control the light since the tube light is just washing the whole area in light otherwise then we have this 600D hidden behind this flag here Daniel shot this through some Garden Gate material we found laying around and had the lights set right around one percent to just give a hint of texture on Justin since that light is being broken up by that Garden material then he added a flag here to cut all the spill that we were getting to the other room outside we have our 1200d kicking through the window and some more obstructions that are breaking up that light and giving us this texture in the middle room which we will see once we do our pan in that first shot and the Final Touch was a second tube light that hit this back wall to create another pocket of light and of course that sweet sweet Haze which as we showed in another episode gives a great sense of atmosphere and weight to the image so all in we have our door here giving us this back Edge then we have our main tube light over here which is giving us our main key that he walks into here then we have our tube in the back that giving us this splash of light and the texture from the 600D coming from behind the camera which as the shot progresses he moves through giving us a bit more on his right Edge and we end here with him walking into the light that we're getting from the 1200d which you can see all the nice texture that we're getting from those obstructions on the window here on the floor but that's it it's not overly complicated and Daniel leaned into the strengths of the location but we do have access to around ten thousand dollars in lighting and rigging for the pro version now Daniel has to light the same moment with less than 500 worth of lighting and rigging since again no one single item is allowed to cost more than one hundred dollars so again here we have the open door giving us a lot of natural light but the problem we have now is that our under 100 lights don't have anywhere near as much power so we aren't going to be able to bring up the room to match the exterior as much which means finding a compromise with the exposure and this leaves the outside a bit more Overexposed than we wanted thankfully the r5c has surprisingly solid dynamic range with 15 stops on paper and we are seeing a solid amount of dynamic range here we have a very dark and Moody interior and an opening to a very bright sunny exterior which is funny because while we were shooting the pro version of this shot it was complete overcast but once we shifted to the shot that needed that we got Sun of course we are shooting raw and log to help that and with Raw on this camera we do have access to c-log 2. with the clip on the timeline you can click on there jump over to the source Tab and have access to change those color profiles here which does include both c-log 2 and 3. it is a bit tough to edit straight raw footage as well so one feature I really love is the ability to record proxies to the additional SD slot while also shooting raw at the same time so you're ready to go right into post without having to create those proxies after the fact but getting back to the scene for our cheaper setup Danielle had to do some creative problem solving since we aren't even using c-stands here because they all cost over a hundred dollars each so first up is what will replace the tube light for our main key for this Daniel took one of our can lights and taped a few MC Lights inside then since we're not allowed to use actual diffusion he cut up a piece of frosted shower curtain to diffuse the light inside the can light also helped us rig the light since we weren't allowed to use the rigging we had before so instead we used the power cable as rigging point and attached it to the truss with an a-clamp to replace what the 600D was giving us Daniel made another one of these can lights and had it hitting a bounce to help fill more on Justin we're getting a bit of an eye light here with this ad as well and this balance is our DIY stop sign bounce that we showed how to make in this episode here there was really no replacing what the 1200d was giving us though so instead Daniel just opened a door to get a little more Daylight into this back room to help bring those levels up this was really the only solution since none of the lights we were allowed to use now will make even a dent in that space then for this splash of light back here we are again using some MC Lights this time just attaching them to a metal chair that was laying around to use as a light stand then right before we shot we hazed up the room as much as we could with our atmospheric aerosol cans which you can get two of these for about 30 bucks but that was it so again we have our outside light giving him the edge here and filling the room we have our MC can light giving him this great front edge then our second MC can light hitting the bounce to fill this front and finally the MC Lights on the metal chair giving us this Splash on the wall and honestly I like the cheap version more for the first half than I do with the pro gear when we shift over to this area I do prefer the pro setup but I love seeing how this turned out since for me the entire idea of this experiment was to see how much the gear was doing versus the talent of my VP and unsurprisingly Daniel's Talent shines through the image regardless of what gear we put in front of him of course we have a camera that I love here but even the camera is very much on the low-cost end in fact you could rent this same camera for under a hundred dollars a day and speaking of the camera let's take a closer look at a few things that I do love and one issue I have obviously a big love here is the raw 8K that's a pretty killer option to have for instance this shot originally looked like this and I was able to scale without the slightest hint of image loss and of course you can push it far more than that then you have a full frame sensor here but you aren't locked to that you can shift down to 35 millimeter or 16. nice for two reasons one you aren't Limited in your lensing and two if you are on full frame you can jump over to 35 or 16 to punch into your image if you are in a pinch then you have D squeeze options right in camera for anamorphics on the low light front this one does really well you have dual native ISO at 800 and 3200 but you can take that ISO pretty high and still have a solid image especially after a little post denoising which you can see in these shots I took the camera out for a little local firework thing and was surprised at how much I enjoyed shooting with it the size and weight are perfect for moving around quickly and these slow motion options are solid as well again you have up to 60 frames in raw but you can shift down to 4K and go up to 120 and it looks great you do have internal image stabilization here but no Ibis and the rolling shutter seems similar to most digital cameras pretty slight overall and again Canon is sponsoring this episode but they don't get to choose my opinion and honestly I love this camera I would say this camera is perfect but it has just one negative for me no internal NDS yes you can get NDS for your lens or matte box but nowadays I want those internal so I don't have to mess with that while shooting but that really is my only complaint wear counts most the image quality this thing is very impressive and you have have that delicious Canon color science so you end up with this very pleasing image that grades so easily but finishing up our shots here we have this one in the middle room which as far as the Pro versus low budget goes this is the dead giveaway for me with the pro version we have the 1200d blasting through the windows being broken up by the things on there and with the haze we're getting these amazing shafts of light that elevate the image quite a bit with the cheaper lights you're never gonna get that you really need something that packs a punch and that comes with a price tag so in the low budget version we're just getting this Bloom of light from the window instead so we're making compromises here for sure but nothing that prevents us from shooting a solid sequence and I guess I did just give away which was the pro and which was the low budget so to confirm sequence a was the pro lights in sequence B was the low budget I'm sure many of you figured that out already for the same reason I would have this shot but again what I love about this is that Daniel and I were able to make it work no matter what was thrown at us like a sudden downpour and go away come again another day Mommy wants to play [Music] and this whole thing was done low budget even the pro end we didn't use a crew we depended on the auto focus from the r5c for the majority of the shots and even the pricey gear we brought was minimal so when we shifted to the low budget it really was Bare Bones but it was all about adjusting our approach to what we had for each given moment whether that meant opening doors or skylights to take more advantage of the natural light living with a different feel than we were initially after or maybe even adjusting our method of shooting which we didn't do here but with a lesser quality camera I probably would have opted to go handheld and lean into a purposefully more gritty look to bend to what we had now don't get me wrong I love gear I love Pro gear and there's some stuff that you can't do without it like augmenting the sun or getting these God Rays or being able to just move faster but it doesn't mean that should stop you from telling your story and making it look beautiful if we rented all the gear we used our Pro sequence would have been 10 times more expensive maybe more but we still made those low budget shots work and in many cases and Daniel does agree with me here we ended up liking the low budget version better I think this is because we had a sort of the shark doesn't work experience with it with the right tools we just put them up and they did their job but without them we had to think outside the box invent more create more solutions for problems it's kind of like what we say about filmmaking in general I like to give myself obstacles even when there aren't any because it forces you to think in those ways and get more creative than you would have otherwise so huge thank you to Canon for helping us bring this episode to you all and definitely check out the r5c if you're in the market for a low-cost camera with an image that can go toe-to-toe with almost any Camera Plus it has a ton of great features like autofocus and face detection great color solid low light internal 12-bit 8K raw slow motion and one major perk that we didn't talk about which is its photo mode this is a really fantastic photography camera on top of it and the best part about it is that you shift into those modes so when you're using it as a cinema camera you shift here and you get a video menu when you go photos you shift over here and get the menu for that and I know I'm just echoing what many reviews have already said about this camera but it really is excellent and that is it for today links to everything in the notes below including info on our DP Daniel so you can check out more of his work and I'm now going to leave you with a cut of our opening sequence that mixes the pro gear and the low gear together to see if you can tell which is which but until next time don't forget to write shoot edit repeat foreign [Music]

Channel: Film Riot

Views: 68,782

Keywords: film riot, triune films, ryan connolly, filmmaking, tutorial, how to, adobe, film school, cinematography, Canon Cinema EOS, Canon camera, Cinema camera, back light, beams of light, bounce, cinema, cinematic, content creator camera, film, filmmaker, filmmakers, haze, how to make a movie, how to make any location cineamtic, key light, light, lighting, location, video camera or best video camera, youtube creator camera, r5c, canon r5c, EOS R5C, Low budget, diy, low budget, cheap, cheap lights

Id: QwcleA-3kkk

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2023